US became a superpower and Argentina a basket case owes nothing to intricacies of geography, culture or religion. Countries become rich or poor because of the choices their rulers make. But what is so new about that? Why some countries thrive and others fail is a big question in economics. Beattie hops from country to country and across history for answers. In one chapter he visits
THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF THE SEA by O P Sharma, Oxford University Press, Rs 795 The law of the sea has undergone more changes in the last 60 years than in the past 100. This book deals with some of the changes.
On India Meteorological Department using statistical models instead of dynamical ones for forecasting Tell me which dynamical model has given correct forecasts for India? The forecasts for Indian monsoons given by the US, UK and Europe in April this year (using dynamical models) threw up different predictions. None of them could predict monsoons would be so low. But the India Meteorological
back in the 20th century, when nation-building was not a foul term and public-private partnership was not a keyword, children grew up with the ideal of becoming doctors and engineers. Medicine was a noble profession. With changing times, commerce has become more reliable as an instrument of healthcare than nobility; medical insurance sounds more reasonable than the Hippocratic oath. But the
There has been an animated debate in the past three years over the supply of food in the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programme. Supplementary nutrition has been provided to all children under the age of six since the inception of the programme more than three decades ago. This was done with the recognition that the nutrition gap (between what children should be
Producing food simply to dump it is a waste of land, water, energy required for growing, processing and transporting it. Tristram Stuart,author of the recently published book, Waste, Uncovering the Food Scandal, shows how the way we live has created a global food crisis and how simple it would be to fix it. Kaushik Das Gupta spoke to him over phone. Excerpts On the enormity of the problem
A LOT of people who write on ecology do so with an unsaid assumption. That people in the past lived in sync with nature till industrialization and modernity disrupted this harmony. Some people
A bill to create a green tribunal was tabled in the Lok Sabha on July 31. Will it ease the burden of courts like the government claims? Lawyers and activists Sumana Narayanan spoke to believe the bill in its present form will centralize legal recourse to environmental matters Sanjay Parikh, Advocate, Delhi The bill talks of the tribunal dealing with
